Vandana Sharma

Vandana Sharma

Dr. Vandana Sharma, MD, MPH

Dr. Vandana Sharma, MD, MPH, is a public health researcher focused on impact evaluations and intervention research with expertise in maternal and child health, HIV, and gender-based violence (GBV).  She is currently based at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), where she is Project Director of the Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) Evaluation at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). Dr. Sharma’s research includes randomized trials of community-based interventions to reduce maternal mortality in northern Nigeria and of interventions to reduce HIV transmission and intimate partner violence in Ethiopia. She is also conducting mixed methods research in humanitarian settings to understand GBV and develop and evaluate interventions in these contexts. Dr. Sharma developed and teaches an innovative, free, online course entitled “Measuring Health Outcomes in Field Surveys” through MIT’s online learning platform (EdX). The course uses documentary style footage from on-going research and evaluations in Kenya and India to provide students with an immersive, practical approach to conducting health research in low-income settings. Dr. Sharma earned her MD from the University of Western Ontario and an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she was a Sommer Scholar. Prior to HSPH, she was previously based at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Senior Research Scientist.